The present invention relates to turntables for moving railcars, and in particular, to a turntable having a plurality of radially disposed railways.
Railway trains are often composed of a number of railcars having different destinations. Ideally railcars with the same destination will be placed consecutively, so they can be easily parsed as a group. Because railcars having the same destination may themselves come from different sources, it is difficult to place these railcars in sequence. Often a train is dispatched with the desired railcars out of sequence and then much effort must be spent decoupling randomly distributed railcars and directing them to a spur or other railways servicing a destination.
In railroad depots and repair shops, a turntable is often used to quickly direct a railcar or other vehicle to sheds or hangers that can be arranged around the turntable in a circle. These arrangements are used to save space and to quickly move railcars. See for example the comments in U.S. Pat. No. 3,534,688 at column 1, lines 5-9.
Known turntables (e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 889,372) have a turntable with a single track that can rotate to one of several radially disposed tracks. A disadvantage with such a turntable are the limitations associated with employing only a single track on a single table. When a railcar is placed on such a turntable, the table must be rotated and the railcar on the table must be removed before the table can be repositioned to accept a new railcar. See also U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,458,229; 1,590,534; 1,703,978; 2,049,813; 3,905,301; 4,041,873; and 4,429,636.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved system for physical distribution, transportation and warehousing employing a turntable and other means for efficiently handling railway railcars.